Missing Pirate Bay founder arrested in Cambodia

The founders of the file sharing web site Pirates Bay was charged with violations against the copyright laws at a court in Stockholm, Sweden, January 31, 2007. Foto: Claudio Bresciani / SCANPIX / Kod 10190
Credit: PA Photos

Gottfrid Svartholm failed to serve his one year jail term

Gottfrid Svartholm, founder of filesharing site The Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Svartholm was arrested on Thursday (August 30). He was sentenced to a year in jail with his fellow Pirate Bay founders, but has been on the run after failing to return to Sweden and serve his jail term.

Torrentfreak.com reports that Svartholm’s lawyer says the arrest is due to the Pirate Bay case, saying: “As far as I understand it is because he is on an international wanted list.”

Svartholm was supposed to return to Sweden to begin his sentence on January 2, 2012. Ill health meant he was unable to attend the original trial, which also saw Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom found guilty of copyright crimes. They were all handed one-year jail sentences in Stockholm and ordered to pay £2.4million in damages to various record labels. They appealed, but a Swedish appeals court upheld the decision.

In May of this year, The Pirate Bay criticised internet hacker collective Anonymous for taking down the Virgin Media website in protest at a court ruling which could have shut the filesharing site down for copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay condemned the action on their Facebook page, stating: “We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us.”

Anonymous took down the website after a court ruling earlier this year which has stated that The Pirate Bay enables breaches of copyright laws. Anonymous claimed the ruling was censorship.

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The Pirate Bay has 3.7 million UK users and 30 million users globally.